Specialist funding broker Calunius Capital – one of the first brokers to enter the UK third-party litigation funding market – is set to launch a private fund.

Calunius will fund its own cases from January 2010, having previously raised capital via a range of methods including pension funds and private investors.

The move comes three years after the company's launch. Calunius will continue to broker deals but with the added value of being able to fund cases, either wholly or in part.

The fund will invest in large-scale commercial litigation cases above £500,000 in value, with no upper size limit on what can be funded.

Calunius partner Mick Smith commented: "Our new fund will be about commercial claims which, as a result of the structuring skills that we have developed, can include the largest, most complex claims in the market."

He added: "As well as the UK we will also be focused on those overseas markets where we already have established relationships with partners with whom the right deals will be co-funded, such as Europe, Australia, the US and certain offshore jurisdictions."

The broker has also recruited Allianz's former head of UK litigation funding, Christian Stuerwald, as its new head of case assessment.

Calunius was set up in 2007 by two former investment bankers, Mark Wells and Mick Smith, to act as a specialist adviser and intermediary in litigation and general disputes. It has been involved in a number of high-profile litigation cases backed by third-party funds, including Addleshaw Goddard's £50m action on behalf of a group of claimants against a London law firm in October 2008.

In January 2009 the company recruited former Osborne Clarke senior partner Leslie Perrin as chairman.

Click here to join Legal Week's LinkedIn In-house lawyers group